Garous Abdolmalekian

trans. by Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh

Border

I am in repose,
as my wife reads a poem about war,

the last thing I need is for the tanks
to advance into my bed.

Bullets have made numerous holes
in my dreams.

You put your eye up to one of them:
You see a street
its skin whitened with snow.
If only it did not snow
If the borders between the streets and the bedcovers were clear.

Now the tanks have crossed the trenches into our bedsheets
and one by one they enter my dream:

I was a kid
My mother washed the dishes
and my father returned home with his black mustache.
When the bombs poured forth
all three of us were children . . .
The following pictures of this dream will tighten your chest
Shut your eyes
Put your lips on this little vent
and just breathe
Just breathe
Breathe!
Breathe!
Damn it!
Just breathe!
Breathe!

The doctor shakes his head
The nurse shakes her head
The doctor wipes the sweat from his brow
And the green mountain chain
on the screen
turns to desert.

You can read more of Garous Abdolmalekian’s work in the print edition of The Arkansas International 8.

Garous Abdolmalekian is the author of five books of poetry. He has won the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize, and is the editor of the poetry section at Cheshmeh Publications in Tehran.

Ahmad Nadalizadeh is currently a PhD student of comparative literature at the University of Oregon. He received his MA in English literature from the University of Tehran.

Idra Novey is the award-winning author of the novel Ways to Disappear. Her work has been translated into ten languages and she's translated numerous authors from Spanish and Portuguese, most recently Clarice Lispector. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.